I Want a Closer Relationship with my Adult Daughter

I now know how it might be possible

My daughter and me, when she was 2 and I was younger than she is now. (Photo provided by author.)

It was my adult daughter’s birthday yesterday. I texted her, wished her a happy birthday, told her I love her.

We argued a few days ago, her in New York, and me in California. It doesn’t take much for us to start. This particular conflict grew out of a difference of opinion about the Covid vaccine.

I realize that I spend a lot of time and energy trying to understand why my daughter and I do not get along. She is my only daughter. I have not struggled in my relationships with my sons as I have with my daughter. I want to understand why. What am I doing to cause our conflicts as mother and daughter? What is she doing?

According to Rosjke Hasseldine, a mother-daughter relationship therapist, speaker, and author of The Mother-Daughter Puzzle (which is next on my reading list, as of right now), the societal expectation that mothers and daughters are supposed to be close causes them to blame themselves for their relationship difficulties.

Yep.

Hasseldine clarifies, though, that based on her years of working with mothers and daughters as a counselor and studying that relationship intensely, she contends that it is our society that tends to set mothers and daughters up for…